Once you’ve succeeded in writing the dynamic individuals you want in your story, the next step is figuring out how you want those individuals to interact with one another. As well-written as your characters may be, without effective conflict they might as well all be plants. Sure, the plants may look nice, and some of them might have intriguing backstories. But who the fuck cares, if they never talk with each other?

Chances are you already know how to write conflict if you’ve interacted with another human being at least once in your life. Take one character’s trait, take another character’s trait, derive contrast from those traits, then let the sparks fly. Simple, right? Not always.

Some of the most common problems plaguing stories of all sorts revolve around imbalanced conflicts. Sometimes stories are resolved too easily, leaving the reader dissatisfied. (see: “deus ex machina“) Other times, simple resolutions to the main conflict make themselves apparent to the reader, yet the characters never recognize them, making any further progression of the conflict seem artificial.

I can’t recommend foolproof ways to avoid these fallacies. A lot of it boils down to common sense and keeping track of the finer details within your stories. What I can recommend is a strategy to prevent those fallacies from becoming a possibility in the first place. To maintain a balance between good and bad, between easy and arduous, between grand and small, between joyful and tragic.

Ask yourself this at any and every given opportunity:

“But at what cost?”

You see, I like to orchestrate conflicts under the guidance of Newton’s Third Law, which states: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The only difference is that, while Newton applied his laws to gravity and physics, I, being a complete dunce when it comes to any branch of science, apply them to storytelling instead.

For every action a character takes within a story, I like to create a reaction that serves as that action’s polar opposite. The fun part comes from how those actions are related, and how they oppose each other.

I can make a cataclysmic event occur from a small mistake, or write a simple solution to something which creates a more difficult problem down the line. The key is to strike a balance between these opposing elements, or else your story will begin to suffer from tonal issues. For example, you don’t want your characters or your world to seem too grand, too kind, or too bleak, or else your reader will begin to feel disconnected with what’s happening.

“But wouldn’t it be more realistic if some actions didn’t have a counterpart? The world isn’t perfect, after all.”

To that, I have two responses.

A) Duh. Remember: this blog is about writing fantasy. Realism is a good trait to have, if that’s what you’re aiming for, but it’s not worth sacrificing logic and intrigue over.

B) This is the important one: you can decide what to show and what not to show to your readers. This fact is what gives authors an absurd amount of power over the reader, and it’s this power that will dictate how effective your conflicts are. If you want the story to have a certain tone at a certain moment, make it seem that way, rather than actually making it that way.

For example, say you’ve just finished detailing an apocalyptic event within your story, and you want your characters—and, by extension, your readers—to feel helpless. Instead of simply making everything bleak and depressing (which will get old very quickly), sprinkle in one (or several) positive outcomes of this event, and have the characters discover these things over time. Then, when you inevitably tear these hopeful things from the characters, think of more positive reactions of that negative action, and repeat. You’ll find that this approach is a lot more effective in making the reader feel how you want them to.

To further explain my point, I’ll provide context using two characters from a short story I wrote in Grade 12. That’s right—we’re not talking about D&D this time! You can choose whether to pleased or upset with that choice. I won’t judge.

This story, entitled “The Apprentice Tries to Get a Job”, was a comedic satire on the typical master/apprentice archetype within fantasy. To punctuate this parody right off the bat, I split the “apprentice” into two characters: Sol and Luna. Their father was their “master” in the arcane arts, though in further relation to the satire, I wrote him to be completely senile.

I can’t claim to have written this story with a high amount of literary theory on the mind, and upon rereading it three years later, I can admit that it’s far from perfect. However, I still view it as one of the best things I’ve written, purely due to how I wrote these characters. I knew exactly who I wanted them to be, and how I wanted them to influence one another.

I chose to focus on Sol and Luna because I intentionally wrote them to be polar opposites to one another, down to their names. Sol is an athletic, energetic optimist; Luna is a gloomy, sardonic hermit. When they use magic, Sol defends and restores, while Luna destroys and hexes.

The story’s lighthearted tone is derived purely from what I chose to show and what not to show of the situation. How did the pair’s father become insane? What happened to their mother? How have others suffered as a result of their magic? I could have chosen to focus on these elements, but I instead depicted wholly positive and laughable actions and reactions, thus achieving the desired tone of my story and allowing the reader to interpret their own answers to any deeper questions.

The actions that I did portray revealed new traits to each character, too. Luna’s biting remarks against Sol revealed his repressed self-doubt—a trait which ultimately led to his failure to secure a job (again, played purely for laughs) at the end of the story. Sol’s loud personality triggered Luna’s unpredictability, which led to the story’s running gag of Luna summoning pianos from the sky and causing mayhem, much to Sol’s chagrin.

One final thing that this strategy provides is an eternal fuel for your ideas. When one thing always results in another, there will never be a perfect or “closed” ending. Which is great!

Leaving even the smallest doors open will allow not only you, but other writers to propel your characters into new scenarios. With how collaborative activities like writing have become, what with phenomena like Web 2.0 and fanfiction, giving other creative people opportunities to develop what you’ve written is one of the greatest things you can achieve.